Irish Plays and Playwrights

by Cornelius Weygandt

It is possible, however, that Sharp might have written other of his projected plays, "The Enchanted Valleys," "The King of Ys," "Drosdan and Yssul," and their many fellows he had projected by title, and others, too, had not developments in Dublin, as I have said, carried Mr. Yeats away from him during 1899 and 1900, and had Sharp himself not during this drifting written that article "Celtic" which so aroused many in Ireland on its appearance in "The Contemporary Review." In this essay, basically a literary protest, "Fiona Macleod" declared "herself" against Separatist politics and affirmed "her" belief, as "she" had in "The House of Usna," that the future greatness of Ireland was to come, not through independence, but through the rebirth of her ancient spirituality in other nations to whom she had given her children.

The Celtic element in our national life [wrote "Fiona Macleod">[ has a vital and great part to play. We have a most noble ideal if we will but accept it. And that is, not to perpetuate feuds, not to try to win back what is gone away upon the wind, not to repay ignorance with scorn, or dullness with contempt, or past wrongs with present hatred, but so to live, so to pray, so to hope, so to work, so to achieve, that we, what is left of the Celtic races, of the Celtic genius, may permeate the greater race of which we are a vital part, so that, with this Celtic emotion, Celtic love of beauty, and Celtic spirituality, a nation greater than any the world has seen may issue, a nation refined and strengthened by the wise relinquishings and steadfast ideals of Celt and Saxon, united in a common fatherland, and in singleness of pride and faith.

There was, however, if less intimacy with the Irish writers in these later years, no less admiration of their art, an admiration that led not only to praise of them in critical articles, but to a greater praise of imitation of their art. So possessed, indeed, was Sharp by the verse of the younger Irish poets as he read them to write of them, that when he turned to verse as "Fiona Macleod," he fell into their rhythms and reproduced the colors of their styles. Writing in prose as a critic of Mr. Yeats, Sharp came to write in verse as Mr. Yeats wrote, as in "The Dirge of the Four Cities": writing of "A.E." in prose as critic, Sharp came to write in verse as "A.E." wrote, as in "Flame on the Wind": writing of "Moira O'Neill," in prose as critic, Sharp came to write in verse as "Moira O'Neill" wrote, as in "I—Brasil": writing in prose as critic, of "Ethna Carberry," Sharp came to write in verse as "Ethna Carberry" wrote, as in "The Exile." So it was, also, that, coming to write of Celtic literature after study of Renan and Arnold, Sharp attained to something of their large utterance.

Sharp sees the Celtic Renaissance, however, always in relation to English literature, and always, it should be added, with French literature and Greek literature in the background. In this wide outlook, in his freedom from political prejudice, in his sympathy with Celtic literature and his knowledge of it, is his greatest strength as a critic of the Celtic Renaissance. His greatest weakness is his willingness in this writing, as elsewhere in his writing, to abide by first impressions, to abide also by the first-come phrase or epithet, banes of the ready writer. But read his essay "Celtic" after you have read the great essays of Renan and Arnold, and read it alongside of what Mr. Yeats has to say of that literature, and you will find it, as I said, of the stature of these. You will at the same time find in this writing the answer to the contention that there were really two personalities in William Sharp. Even Mrs. Sharp, who writes so restrainedly about this question of dual personality, believes the analytical faculty belonged to William Sharp, the imaginative to "Fiona Macleod." But in this criticism of the Celtic Renaissance which is signed "Fiona Macleod," there is as much analysis as is to be found anywhere in his work as William Sharp. So obviously was he identifying "F.M." with "W.S." in this critical writing that Mrs. Janvier, of those in the secret, wrote to him to take warning lest he betray himself. She pointed out to him that such a display of learning as he was making in the later "Fiona Macleod" work would surely lead to discovery. But he did not heed. The truth probably was that he wrote about Celtic things as "Fiona Macleod" because he perhaps felt about them, as "Fiona Macleod," as one who is bilingual thinks about work he is doing, say in German, in German, and about work he is doing in English, in English; but just as surely I believe, because what "Fiona Macleod" wrote commanded more respect than what William Sharp wrote, readier entrance into the magazines, and better pay. If there are those to whom such an explanation seems belittling to William Sharp, I can only say that they cannot have realized that he was a driven man earning his living by his pen. I am not, I confess, a sentimentalist in such matters, and while I do not wholly like his procedure in maintaining the fiction of "Fiona Macleod," it does not seem to me a very heinous sin.

He who would write of the work of William Sharp, indeed, must be resolute to remember that it is to be considered as an essay in the art of letters. There are so many temptations toward writing of it as a scientific problem,—for who is not interested in "dual personality"?—or as a "psychic revelation," if one is bitten—and who is not?—by curiosity about hidden "things"; or as an irritating hoax, if one has been befooled—and who, for one moment or another has not been?—into believing that this writing under the pseudonym of "Fiona Macleod" was the confession of a woman. The romance of it remains, no matter from what point of view you consider it, and, despite your preoccupation with this or that phase of it, the beauty of literary art of parts of it. Parts of it, I say, for to me no writer of our time was more uneven in his work. My point of view, indicated perhaps brutally, and with a firstly and secondly is:—

Firstly, that until he was nearly forty, William Sharp was no more than a skillful literary practitioner, a higher sort of hack, who had done some better writing of a tenuous kind of beauty but imitative in substance and art, in "Sospiri di Roma" and "Vistas," and that after forty, when he was developing one undeveloped side of himself as "Fiona Macleod," he developed another undeveloped side of himself in "Silence Farm." That he attained in a sort of writing, and greatly, that he had not attained in before, in "Silence Farm," has not been acknowledged, so easy has it been to those interested in his work to lose sight of all else in their pursuit of the "Fiona Macleod" side of his nature. It is true of "Silence Farm," as of almost all his other work done under the name of William Sharp, that it is imitative; but it is equally true that a large part of the "Fiona Macleod" work is imitative, too. "Silence Farm" is done under the influence of the later work of Mr. Hardy, but the material of "Silence Farm" is its author's own, and the color of the writing is as distinctly of the Lowlands as the color of "Tess" is of Wessex. That "Silence Farm" is better work in its kind, though that kind is less original than some of his writing as "Fiona Macleod," I have been forced against my prejudices to believe. If I did not so believe I would not have spoken of it side by side with "Tess."

Secondly, that as "Fiona Macleod," William Sharp did much good writing in almost everything published under the pseudonym, achieving wholeness of good tissue in certain sketches and tales and verses on rather varying kinds of subjects, but that his work as "Fiona Macleod" that is really distinguished is in stories of prehistoric Scotland and Ireland, and of Scotland and Ireland in the earliest historic time. In these tales of the Gaels of old time he for the first time breaks ground for others. Before he wrote "Silk o' the Kine," and "The Harping of Cravetheen," "The Annir Choile," and "Enya of the Dark Eyes," there were no short tales of like temper and content and style in literature.

To me little is significant in the early verse of "Fiona Macleod," as little was significant in all the verse of William Sharp until the time of "Sospiri di Roma." And for all the beauty of these pictures in words of the Campagna it is but a transient beauty. It was not until he was mastered by the new beauty that Mr. Yeats brought into English poetry that the verse of William Sharp won to itself abiding beauty and glamour and inevitable phrase. "The House of Usna" (1900) brought to me "Dim face of beauty haunting all the world," and the 1901 edition of "From the Hills of Dream," "The Enchanted Valleys,"; but it was not until after his death that I came upon his best verse of all, the verse of his last five years, which was gathered together posthumously in the 1907 edition of "From the Hills of Dream," and included as "The House of Beauty" in "The Poems and Dramas" of 1911. Who does not know these sets of verses and "The Dirge of the Four Cities," does not know the ultimate accomplishment of William Sharp in poetry.

That the "'Fiona Macleod' mystery" ended with the death of William Sharp is, then, my belief, as it is that it began before he conceived of exploiting a feminine sub-self he had long been aware of in himself. The beginnings of that sort of writing that made "Fiona Macleod" a reputation are to be found very early in his writing, in "The Son of Allan" of 1881, in the "Record" of 1884, in the preface to the "Romantic Ballads" of 1888, in the "Vistas" of 1894. That these earlier expressions of "spiritual" states and guesses at mysteries are not, except for certain parts of "Vistas," so well written as the best writing of similar kind by "Fiona Macleod," is true, and perhaps, at first glance, a matter of wonder. It is, however, I think, not difficult to find an explanation of the better quality of the later work, and that explanation is afforded, firstly and most largely, by the Celtic Renaissance. A man of thirty-five, to all who know him a very vital force, a very original personality, who has all his life wanted to make beautiful things in words out of his dream of life, has disappointed himself and his friends. He is suddenly afforded the opportunity, by the interest in Gaelic subjects that the Celtic Renaissance has awakened, to gain a hearing for work of a kind he has long wanted to do. He had not done such work previously, because he had to live by his pen and could work consistently only at the sort of thing that would sell. He was well known as a journeyman of letters, so well known for bookmaking, and the ways of getting commissions from London editors and publishers, that his knowledge of Highland life would be questioned. All in London knew him as a Londoner. It would be useless for him to say that the Celtic Renaissance had brought back his childhood to him, a childhood as definitely dominated by a Highland nurse as Stevenson's was by the Lowland Alison Cunningham. It would be useless to tell of his summers in Argyllshire and among the inner isles, his intimacy with fishermen who were as elemental as his own dreams of old time. It would have been cast up to him that the editor of "The Canterbury Poets" could not be an original writer, and the very nine days' wonder of "Vistas" would have been pointed to to prove that he might now do well enough, as an imitator, perhaps of Mr. Yeats, as he was in "Vistas;" successful as an imitator of M. Maeterlinck, but that an original Highland writer could not come out of Hampstead. There is no doubt in my mind that it was the part of wisdom for Sharp to put out the new work under a pseudonym, worldly wise if you will, but wise, too, with a higher wisdom. If he could keep the side of him he had never yet exhausted through hackwork apart from his other work, it would grow as it could not if it were a part of his daily stint.

Why Sharp chose a woman's name for his pseudonym has troubled many, but this choice was, I think, as was the assumption of a pseudonym, the part of wisdom. I do not believe, as he at times liked to believe, that he attained a woman's standpoint. He had been complimented on all sides for his composition of the wife's letters in "A Fellowe and his Wife" (1892), in which Mrs. von Teuffel wrote the husband's. Sharp enjoyed their writing as a tour de force and he probably believed they were very womanly. I should say that they showed insight into womanly ways of looking at things rather than a dramatic identification of himself with woman such as is George Meredith's. Sharp had already been experimenting with pseudonyms, that of "H.P. Siwaarmill," an anagram on his own name, being that he recurred to most often. He had written the whole of "The Pagan Review" in 1892 under eight different pseudonyms, and though, in the estimation of those to whom "Fiona Macleod" is all but a sacred name, it be sacrilegious to say it, William Sharp loved all sorts of fantastic tricks, hoaxes, mystifications, though in almost all his writing save in "Wives in Exile" he was seriousness itself. But the chiefest reason of all, in my estimation, for his assumption of a woman's name as his pseudonym was that it afforded greater protection against discovery. There are those who believe that he chose it because he wanted a chance to express that womanly element of human nature there is in all men, and there are others who believe that he was the possessor of a real dual personality in which the "Fiona Macleod's self" was a woman's consciousness; but he very infrequently, after "The Mountain Lovers" (1895), kept in mind in the writings he published as "Fiona Macleod's" that their author was supposed to be a woman, and it is wonderful, indeed, that he was able to preserve the secret until the end. In the earlier "Fiona Macleod" writing there is no revelation of the wide acquaintance with literature that was Sharp's, but despite his harassment by the constant identification of himself with "Fiona Macleod," he gradually allowed to creep into that writing more and more of what was known to be the knowledge of William Sharp, a knowledge unlikely to be also that of a Highland lady who lived apart from the world. His friends pointed out to him the danger he was running in writing from what was obviously a man's standpoint, as in his tales of the wars of Gael and Gall, and of revealing several sorts of interest that were known to be his, but their warnings were in vain. He was apparently unable to limit himself to the restrictions of the part of himself he had essayed to restrict himself to.